Martha and I

Jiri Weiss, a prominent Czech director, makes a triumphant return to the screen with this superb autobiographical memoir starring Michel Piccoli as Ernst, a Jewish obstetrician who shocks two families when he marries Martha, his hefty German housekeeper, played brilliantly by Marianne Sagebrecht. Their relationship is seen through the eyes of Ernst's young nephew Emil, the alter ego of filmmaker Weiss. Emil escapes from his parents, discovers love and comes of age with the help of his freethinking Uncle Ernst in the countryside in pre-World War II Czechoslovakia. All the while the Nazi threat increases. A deeply moving and richly textured love story which won the Audience Award for Best Dramatic Film at the 1991 San Francisco International Film Festival.